ROME, March 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Italy's Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu insisted Wednesday, March 24, that authorities at a day care center reinstate a Moroccan woman barred from a teaching post because she wore an Islamic veil.

"I want the officials at the day care center to account for their mistake and to rectify it," said Pisanu, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The Islamic veil, worn with dignity and without ostentation is an innocuous symbol of a cultural and religious identity which deserves all our respect," Pisanu said.

Pisanu's personal intervention came after Fatima Mouayche, 40, was dismissed from her job at a day care centre in the Samona suburb of Turin because school officials claimed her headscarf "might scare the children".

"No one can say how the children would have reacted to a veiled woman," Cristina Ferrari, an official at the day care center located in Samone, near Turin, was quoted as saying in the daily newspapers La Stampa and La Repubblica newspapers.

"They might have been scared and it was better not to run that risk," Ferrari was quoted by AFP as saying.

She told newspapers on Tuesday that "religion had nothing to do" with the decision to dismiss Mouayche.

One mother who uses the centre was quoted by La Repubblica daily as saying Wednesday that the school was right to sack the Moroccan.

"Religion has nothing to do with the workplace and it must remain outside. The veil could frighten children," said the woman, who declined to be named.

Mouayche said she was upset and angered by the decision to dismiss her, saying that she had never encountered any criticism for wearing hijab since she settled in Italy eight years ago.

There are 800,000 Muslims living in Italy, populated by more than 56 million.

The Madrid blasts - for which Spanish officials pointed an accusing finger at Al-Qaeda , - are feared to mark a new wave of racism and xenophobic attacks against Muslims in Europe similar to that in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks.

"A greater sense of fear among the general population has exacerbated already existing prejudices and fuelled acts of aggression and harassment across Europe," the group had said after the attacks.

File photo of a hijab-clad Muslim woman in the west

Mouayche said she was willing to take off her headscarf if she had to, a move allowed by Islam if necessary.

"I am willing to take it off if it's so important for them even though there is no law banning women from wearing the headscarf in Italy," said the divorced mother of two.

But scholars said that given the current situation of attacks against the Islamic code of dress, here comes into play the juristic rule 'Necessity relaxes the law'.

"If the matter gets worse and unbearable, to the extent of halting the normal course of life, then they can change a bit from wearing complete Hijab to a partial one, i.e., they can wear something to cover their head and neck," said prominent scholar Abdul-Fattah `Ashoor, a Professor of the Exegesis of the Qur'an at Al-Azhar University.

"All this is just a precautionary measure against attack or harassment. Should that prove futile, they can then take off Hijab until things get back to normal," Ashoor added.

The EUMC report said that in European countries women who wore hijab were particularly vulnerable to attacks because they were “visually identifiable” as Muslims.

"The hijab seems to have become the primary visual identifier as a target for hatred,” the report said. "With Muslim women being routinely abused and attacked across those countries in the EU where Muslim women could be identified in this way".

Adel Smith, an Italian-Egyptian who converted to Islam in 1987, had asked the nursery to place an Islamic symbol alongside the crucifix in his children's classrooms.

When his request was turned down, the 43-year-old activist took the issue to court.